Escape artist celebrates Houdini with double straitjacket feat

Lucas Wilson frees himself in 58.46 seconds while hanging 33 metres in air

AMHERST — On Sunday a 24-year-old hung upside down, 33 metres in the air, wrapped in two straitjackets.

He was making a name for himself.

“Houdini drew crazy publicity to advertise a show doing stunts like this,” Lucas Wilson said shortly before his Amherst performance. “He made escaping into an art form.”

When Harry Houdini arrived in Amherst 118 years ago on Sunday, he hadn’t even seen a straitjacket yet.

He was a 22-year-old, penniless, wide-eyed magician whose show a few days earlier in Halifax had been cancelled by the sheriff because the company Houdini was working for was behind on its bills.

So he and his wife Bess left the company and went out on their own, touring the small, tough little resource towns of Springhill, Parrsboro and Joggins before arriving in the then-prosperous industrial town of Amherst.

“Houdini starved for the first 10 years of his career,” said Bruce McNab, author of The Metamorphosis: The Apprenticeship of Harry Houdini.

The carpenter from Williamsdale, Cumberland County, led Houdinites on a tour through Amherst on Sunday before Wilson’s performance.

In this town as well, Houdini encountered more bad luck.

The Amherst Daily News had run a column a few days earlier warning people to beware of strangers because a gang of pickpockets was about.

Needless to say, a short man with a heavy Hungarian accent practising sleight of hand didn’t get the warmest welcome — except at the furniture and carriage factory across from the train station; there they stopped work so Houdini could entertain hundreds of labourers.

McNab pitched the day of magic, including a performance by New York magician Margaret Steele, to Amherst town council as part of the 125th anniversary celebrations going on this week.

So to cap off the Maritime Rockabilly Shakedown Festival, which ran over the weekend, the town brought in Wilson, who lives in Port Dover, Ont., and his assistant Kelly Defilla.

Like Houdini and Bess, the two young entertainers spend their days touring and promoting their act.

And on Sunday they did make a name for themselves.

In 58.46 seconds, Wilson escaped from those two straitjackets to the cheer of thousands.